- Establish Reporting Rules within the Finance Team
- Catch All Adjustments in an “Overs and Unders” Schedule
- Avoid a Huge Wave of Accounts Payable Invoices at Month-End
- Early Closing of the Accounts Payable Ledger
- Close Accruals before the Accounts Payable Cutoff
- Avoid Inter company Adjustments
- Early Closing-Off of Accounts Receivable
- Early Capital Expenditure Cutoff
- Early Inventory Cutoff
- From 5 p.m. Last Day to 5 p.m. First Working Day – The key steps
- Deliver a Flash Report at the End of Day 1
- Ban All Late Changes to the Month-End Report
- Stop Variance Reporting at Account Code
- Stop Monthly Reforecasting of Year-End
- Quality Assurance steps (checking internal consistency + the two person read through)
These steps are all discussed and templates provided in my toolkit Fast close: A Guide to Rapid Month-end and Year-end Reporting- Toolkit (Whitepaper + e-templates)